FootprintsintheWind.com

Let us stand
Outside ourselves
See whom we can hear
Beyond! Beyond!
Whom are we beyond?

:- Doug.

I live in the middle of the sun and all about me are the rays of the divine. All is afire and exploding outward, embracing.

:- Doug.

Let me live! What’s all this work stuff interrupting life? Living has its own work to do: can we have our work serve this?

:- Doug.

Compassion is the way of life:
life is in love,
in engaging the holy, the other
Engaging is
becoming one with the wholly other,
allowing yourself to grow outward
Holy, holy, holy:
different, different, different;
other, other, other:
yet drawing us to to the holy different other
Stand here and the winds will
permeate us,
carry us out,
intermingle us with the
larger, larger
Compassion is the way of life

:- Doug.

Life is love; it is interaction with others in our environs. It is touching and being touched, and working, working for the better of betweens and amongs.

:- Doug.

It is the only way out. Conversation enables us to escape ourselves. Conversation makes our boundaries permeable: to each other, to betweens, to amongs, to poetry, and finally to whole-making.

:- Doug.

The first work is to help families and communities live as fully as they can, whatever their stage of life: sick and fragile; young and athletic; wise and seeking the holy. All alive can live well now.

:- Doug.

The government is out of money. If children are to receive the education and especially attention they need, it is up to us to do this work of love. We must become the schools. We must become the government. After all, we already are. She’s not a budget, she’s a child. She’s a human being, a person. She’s a terrible one to waste. We have some tough choices, so keeping in mind what’s most important will make it easier. Which is more important—our wallets or our children?

:- Doug.

The brilliance of the family
The brilliance of the community
These we ought to respect
These we need to nurture

:- Doug.

Let us kindle one another’s brilliance.

:- Doug.

Seek to approach sleep with a question to take up with God.

:- Doug.

What are you doing?
Engaging G*d

:- Doug.

Together: brilliance!

:- Doug.

Conversation is sacred work in the family, it catalyzes our brilliance together. So too in community.

:- Doug.

Conversation is sacred work, catalyzing people’s brilliance.

:- Doug.

The prophets of old sometimes speak as if specific words were placed upon their tongues; but at times they may be speaking metaphorically. For me, I feel a call to bring a message. The exact message is slow (decades!) in coming. It may in fact be my duty to research, to work out daily the message by writing, speaking and meeting; to see what is unearthed by this sweat.

We receive our prophetic words as much in having to work them out as in being given dictation.

:- Doug.

Each person has a different touch on the shoulder (or maybe somewhere else!) and the touch becomes larger as we work between and among us.

:- Doug.

Unique & intimate the revelation
Given to each
Your light shines into
My shimmering darkness
Which rings out to
Her pregnant silence
Unique & intimate the revelation
—& larger—
Given between us
—& larger still—
Among us
As we meet
& after as we walk on
Carrying new ways to
Open

:- Doug.

We yearn for a God
It is human so to do
Our yearning is our reality
& G*d’s

:- Doug.

He asked his first boss, “What do I do?” She asked him “What do you want to do?” This is really profound.

How many of us do what we want to do in life? So often we do what we think we must do in order to earn a living. We get a job, buy a car and a house and wake up 40 years later.

For many of us, health is still good then, so we have a second chance to ask ourselves that question: What do we want to do? What would do the most good in the world, what would we like to see done to make this a planet hospitable to life?

There is much we can do, yet we spend our years spending our minutes. What do we want to do?

:- Doug.

We can’t know G*d
We can know G*d
We can’t know G*d
We can know G*d
We both can and can’t know G*d

:- Doug.

Conversation is work. It is seldom light and breezy. We are fitting ideas together, generating new, hearing hard stories, facing difficult tasks. Conversation is for work. Conversation is for hearing and hearing again, weaving what we hear, not what we came in with. Conversation is birthing work, and all birthing work is sweat, screaming, tears and blood.

:- Doug.

I do not find conversation always pleasant. Sometimes it is difficult, gut wrenching, down-making, anger promoting. Other times, even after the unpleasant parts, we come to new open land, where something is fresh and possibilities present.

:- Doug.